Data visualization is emerging as an increasingly popular area for hiring managers, especially as companies search for new ways to make sense of vast, amorphous amounts of data and to present the numbers in ways that are clear, colorful, and interactive. As companies come to rely more and more on data-driven decisions, numeracy will be as crucial as literacy for anyone who wants to stay employable. Although the field of quantitative analytics is still in its infancy, the real stars at many companies are already "hybrid" employees, who can use data to make better decisions in fields like marketing and who can translate the figures into graphics other people can get excited about. For anyone serious about a career in data visualization, it's important to start learning a new tool. In short, Excel is not the only means of representing data. There is plenty of powerful data visualization software that is available for free, including Google Docs and Datawrapper. Experiment with a couple of these until you're comfortable with how they work and what they can do. Brush off that dusty statistics book. With data rapidly becoming the lingua franca of business, a basic understanding of probability and statistics certainly won't hurt. Also, play around with numbers and practice looking at huge sets of figures and extracting a meaning from them that you can then represent visually. An amazing variety of data gets published online by government agencies and others. Design is a popular topic these days, especially in data visualization, where it's essential to making information accessible. Being able to speak intelligently about design, and showing that you know how to use it, puts you at an advantage over pure quantitative analysts. Once you've become adept at presenting figures in visual terms, you'll find that not everyone in an organization wants to accept what the data are saying, especially if they don't like numbers or resist basing decisions on them. So you have to know how to tell a story, and how to sell what your data visualization is showing. This often requires thinking about your audience when it comes to choosing how much detail you want to share with them.

Campus Technology (05/01/14)Code.org and the New York City Foundation for Computer Science Education (CSNYC) plan to use the Bootstrap curriculum to help educators learn how to teach students algebraic and geometric concepts with computer programming. The two nonprofits will use middle-school lessons within schools and districts where they have a presence. Code.org and CSNYC promote adding computer science classes to schools starting in early grades. The curriculum is free and aligns with Common Core math standards. Launched as a 10-week after-school program, Bootstrap is now transitioning to become an in-school program in which students learn a programming language and other concepts and create a game. "The whole curriculum is a sequence of steps that get you to the point where you have a working game at the end," says Brown University professor and Bootstrap co-developer Shriram Krishnamurthi. "Once we tell [students] they're going to make their own game, the motivation is done."Full Article

The Independent (United Kingdom) (05/01/14)Today's advances in artificial intelligence (AI) research will pale in comparison to what the next decade will bring, write Stephen Hawking, Stuart Russell, Max Tegmark, and Frank Wilczek. They say success in advancing AI would be the biggest event in human history, as AI could provide tools for eradicating war, disease, and poverty. Looking further ahead, there are no fundamental limits to what can be achieved, and an explosive transition is possible, although it might play out differently from what is depicted in popular entertainment. The authors warn AI's development could lead to machines with superhuman intelligence outsmarting financial markets, out-inventing human researchers, out-manipulating human leaders, and developing weapons people cannot understand. The short-term impact of AI depends on who controls it, but the long-term impact depends on whether it can be controlled at all. Facing potential futures of incalculable benefits and risks, the authors say experts are not doing everything possible to ensure the best outcome and they note little serious research is devoted to these issues outside certain nonprofit institutes. They say everyone in the field should ask themselves what they can do to improve the chances of reaping the benefits and avoiding the risks.